On Saturday, 25 January 2014 at 15:52:39 UTC, H. S. Teoh wrote:
On Sat, Jan 25, 2014 at 11:51:57AM +0000, John Colvin wrote:
On Friday, 24 January 2014 at 16:14:15 UTC, H. S. Teoh wrote:
>On Fri, Jan 24, 2014 at 06:01:33AM -0500, Nick Sabalausky
>wrote:
>[...]
>>While Linux isn't my primary desktop system, the desktop
>>Linux stuff
>>I do work with has gone from Ubuntu -> Debian -> Mint.
>>
>>I left Ubuntu because Canonical was starting to piss me off,
>>partly
>>because of their apparent obsession with being basically
>>just an OSX
>>clone. So I went upstream to Debian. Still run Debian on my
>>server,
>>but I abandoned it as a desktop OS partly because so much of
>>it is
>>out of date literally before they even release it, and also
>>because
>>once they do get a newer version of something, there's a
>>fair chance
>>you can't actually get it without upgrading the whole OS
>>because not
>>everything actually gets into backports
>[...]
>
>You should just run off Debian/unstable (or if you're chicken,
>testing). I do. In spite of the name, it's actually already
>as
>stable as your typical desktop OS with its typical occasional
>random
>breakage. Stable is really for those people who are running
>mission
>critical servers that when the OS dies, people die. That's
>why it's
>always "out of date", 'cos everything must be tested
>thoroughly
>first. For desktop users you don't need that kind of
>stability, and
>generally you don't want to wait that long to get software
>upgrades.
>So just use unstable or testing. I've been living off
>unstable for
>almost 15 years and have only had 1 or 2 occasions when
>things broke
>in a major way. That's saying a lot considering how many
>times I've
>had to reformat and reinstall Windows (supposedly a stable
>release
>version!) back when I was still stuck using it.
>
>
>T
The thing with stability is, it's meaningless without context.
The
only thing that has meaning is stability in the face of a
particular
workload.
Mission critical servers tend to have very static
requirements. A
power-user's desktop has very dynamic requirements. Debian
stable
will be more "stable" for the server, but the same is not
necessarily true for the desktop.
OK, but what I was getting at was that Debian 'unstable' is
actually
usable for daily desktop needs in spite of the name.
T
I was agreeing with you, in a very round-a-bout way :)
